Alt Dot Energy

Chinese Invest $1.5 Billion in West Texas Wind Farm

khalifa saber — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:35:47 +0000

Despite the tightness of global credit markets the Chinese are showing a willingness to finance renewable energy projects wherever they may be. A consortium of Chinese businesses backed by Chinese banks have committed $1.5 billion as part of joint venture to build 36,000-acre, 600-megawatt wind farm in West Texas, using turbines made in China.

The announcement on Thursday named Shenyang Power Group of China, Cielo Wind Power LP and U.S. Renewable Energy Group, a private equity firm based in Austin, Texas as the the three entities involved in the joint venture.

The project shows how much China’s own wind industry has grown and comes two days after U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu told lawmakers that the U.S. was falling behind China and others in alternative energy investment.

“With a long track record for building some of the world’s biggest wind farms, the U.S. is a real ideal target for foreign alternative energy investment,” said Jinxiang Lu, Shenyang Power Group’s chairman and chief executive.

The project will use 240 of its 2.5-megawatt turbines. Construction is scheduled to begin in March 2010, and the project is expected to create 300 temporary jobs and about 30 permanent jobs. Six hundred megawatts of wind power is enough to meet the electricity needs of between 135,000 and 180,000 American homes for a year.

Chinese wind turbine manufacturer A-Power Energy Generation Systems Ltd. will begin shipping the 2.5-megawatt turbines in March 2010, built in the company’s plant in the city of Shenyang.

he project’s owners, a joint venture that includes Dallas investor Cappy McGarr, say they’ll get financing from Chinese banks but are relying on a stimulus grant worth as much as $450 million.

“That is a key part of the economics to make the project work,” said Walt Hornaday, president of Austin-based Cielo Wind Power LP, one of three partners in the venture. “Without that, we would not be talking about this project.”

Team Tokai wins Global Green Challenge in Australia

khalifa saber — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 23:31:57 +0000

The Japanese Tokai University team built the solar powered car that won the Global Green Challenge on Wednesday after averaging speeds of more than 100 kilometres (62 miles) per hour in a four-day race through Australia’s desert Outback.

There was also the record breaking Tesla Roadster which broke the EV World Record by going for 313 Miles (501 KM) on Single Charge!

The Global Green Challenge in Australia is a showcase for alt-fuel vehicles of all kinds. It’s a good way to see what is currently possible, and of what direction the industry is going in terms of green transportation.

The Tokai Challenger crossed the finish line in Adelaide, South Australia, at 3:39 pm local time, after 29 hours and 49 minutes’ racing following Sunday’s departure from the northern city of Darwin.

The team, from Tokai University, averaged 100.54 kilometres per hour to snap a four-race winning streak by the Netherlands’ Nuon outfit. It is the first Japanese victory since Honda Dream II in 1993.

The futuristic Tokai put in a near-flawless run with only one flat tyre on the 3,000 kilometre race. Its nearest rivals were more than two hours behind and were due to battle it out for second place on Thursday.

Tesla Break Electric Vehicle Distance World Record

The latest record comes from a red 2008 Tesla Roadster: Simon Hackett and co-driver Emilis Prelgauskas drove 313 miles (501 km) on a single charge, something that no production EV has done before.

Simon Hackett said: “Emilis and I have decades of experience flying gliders competitively and we applied the same energy conservation techniques to our driving, with significant results! The car had about 3 miles of range left when the drive was completed. We travelled 501km on a single charge. Let that sink in for a minute.”

To squeeze out the most out of the Roadster’s battery, average speed was kept around 35 mph/55 kph. Above that speed, air resistance starts to require more energy to keep the car moving, reducing total range.

The Tesla’s 53 kWh lithium-ion battery was rated at 244 miles with the EPA’s methodology.

The Smart Grid Takes Shape in Germany with E-Energy Plan

khalifa saber — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:19:42 +0000

The new age of green electricity is beginning to take shape in Germany under the name E-Energy. The plan is a vision to create a giant renewable energy grid using inputs as diverse as huge offshore wind farms, gigantic solar farms in the deserts and mini-powers plants located on the roofs and in the basements of homes and offices. Smart appliances like washers and dryers will communicate with each other in order to wash or dry when electricity is cheapest.

This new smart electricity generation and grid test will begin in six German regions, involving several cities and tens of thousands of homes and hundreds of businesses will begin in earnest this month. Research will be conducted into the possibility, for example, of homes that can largely produce all the electricity required by a household, as well as energy exchanges that enable consumers to sell any excess, self-produced and environmentally friendly electricity at a profit back to the energy grid.

Participating firms include Siemens, SAP, IBM and energy giants like EnBW, RWE and Vattenfall, Germany’s economics and environment ministries have already mobilized €140 million for the development of the associated technologies and the tests. The government has provided €60 million and the industrial partners are raising the rest together with public utilities and smaller, innovative technology partners.

This is all part of an accelerating trend with number of recent developments suggesting the energy revolution is at hand:

Companies like Munich Re, Siemens, Deutsche Bank, E.on and RWE, are working together under the name Desertec, want to build giant solar power plants in Africa’s Sahara desert to feed the European grid.
Car parts maker Bosch acquired solar cell manufacturer Ersol in 2008 and, rumors suggest, is currently working to designs for solar powered car components.
Carmaker Volkswagen, together with ecologically friendly energy utility Lichtblick, wants to install 100,000 mini power plants directly in consumers’ homes.
In mid-September, the German federal government agreed to the massive expansion of power generation through large offshore windparks.
Google (GOOG) is also trying to get in on the smart grid action. The US company is developing software to allow consumers to track their electricity usage in real-time over the Internet.
Cisco is working with one large European electricity grid provider to create a smart power grid of the future. By mid-2010, the company wants to equip power lines, substations and transformers with information technology.

Energy and IT markets are drawing closer together and the automobile industry will likely follow soon. A new business sector born from the amalgamation of these three immense sectors could create new opportunities for partnerships and change the economic landscape. It will open up new business opportunities for the automobile sector, power and IT companies as well as innovative start-ups, providing vast growth opportunities.

Residents of the cities of Karlsruhe and Stuttgart, where a government pilot E-Energy project is being tested, are already experiencing what it is like to be part a smart grid. There, 200 homes and companies have been equipped with photovoltaic systems and CHPs or fuel cells.

This model transforms the consumer into a producer who can make some money in the energy market. They are also testing a pricing model in which electricity rates depend on supply and demand. If the amount of available energy goes down, the rates go up correspondingly. Users can monitor the system on an Internet portal and generate energy whenever the price peaks, thereby also stabilizing the overall supply.

The true environmental revolution will happen from the bottom up, through mini power stations in basements of private homes, that generate both heat and power, as well as solar panels that can cover the electricity needs of factories. In future, energy will be supplied from millions of networked mini power plants rather than from relatively few centralized sources.

Volkswagen and utility company Lichtblick launched their first major offensive on the people power grid in September. The two companies intend to install up to 100,000 combined heat and power units (CHPs) in the basements of apartment buildings. They will initially be fired by natural gas, later on possibly by biogas. The basement power plants will heat the homes while simultaneously producing electricity and sending precise data to the companies. The companies believe the total investment in the project will come to €2 billion.

Right now it is nearly impossible for consumers to see much electricity they are using on a daily basis, but there are devices now being made that will give homes and businesses a more accurate idea of the energy they are consuming. The smart grid would tell consumers how much electricity each appliance is using. And consumers will be able to do a lot more to determine at which prices they consume electricity. Customers will be able to cut their electricity bills, moreover, by pinpointing off-peak hours to run their energy-intensive machines

A household’s smart devices would be controlled by so-called home management systems. In the city of Mannheim, also home to an E-Energy pilot project, companies like Papendorf Software Engineering are developing related hardware and software under the “Energy Butler” label.

In addition to smart meters, a number of other potential growth markets are being tested as part of the E-Energy project. German household appliance maker Miele, for example, is supplying hundreds of homes in the Ruhr region with intelligent washing machines that provide exact details about usage and can be either programmed or operated remotely to automatically turn on and do their work at times of the day when electricity is cheapest. Other companies are building adapters that can turn older machines on and off, based on energy prices.

This sort of energy management—that can switch appliances on and off depending on the amount of energy available from wind farms and solar plants—is the main prerequisite for a power grid running largely on renewable energies. Supply and demand have to be tightly controlled to keep the grid from crashing.

Innovative energy storage systems are also intended for the system. Batteries up until now have proven too expensive and in some cases too inefficient for the task. Now scientists are looking into other ways of storing energy, and new concepts are being tested in the German port city of Cuxhafen.

During peak times, the region is able to produce more than 80 percent of its needed electricity using wind turbines, but when the wind dies down, so does the capacity to supply electricity. “To make up for fluctuations,” said project leader Wolfram Krause, “cold stores could be cooled more than needed or swimming pools overheated. If less electricity is available later, cooling and heating devices could be temporarily turned off until the energy buffer has been used up.”

Storage solutions could also play a special role in electric cars in the future. In one E-Energy project in Germany’s Harz mountains region, they serve as reserve batteries from the regional power net. If electricity supplies are low, cars not in use can also feed energy back into the grid.

If millions of small power stations are feeding the mains with a fluctuating quantity of electricity, and millions upon millions of terminal devices and home management systems are transmitting energy consumption data or receiving commands, the grid operators’ systems could go haywire. The power transmission has to be continually adjusted at millisecond intervals. And it’s a process that can only be achieved if it is highly automated.

That’s why setting up such an intelligent power grid, that can manage this mass of data across the country, is probably the biggest challenge of the new electric age. “The deployment of all modern energy technologies will rise or fall based on the construction of a communications network that can deal with mass amounts of real-time data and transport them using Internet Protocols,” said Ingo Schönberg, the head of Power Plus Communications (PPC), a company that is producing such technologies. “A smart grid is the backbone of the new infrastructure.”

It’s also one of the most lucrative emerging business opportunities. The hitherto dominant energy giants are suddenly faced with new and formidable foes: technology groups keen on seizing control over energy supplies on the Internet. Siemens CEO Peter Löscher puts the volume of the smart grid market at €30 billion by the year 2014. In September, the company said it was planning to invest €6 billion in this area over that period.

“We are calculating a future annual market potential of $20 billion,” said Cisco SmartGrid executive Christian Feisst. He believes that within 10 years the technology will be deployable on a mass scale. And PPC’s Schönberg believes that smart grids will be available in some cities in the next few years and that they will be available to the masses by the middle of the next decade. He said the first aim must be to automate as many measuring and control processes as possible in order to reduce the increasing levels of complexity. Cisco is currently conducting pilot tests of smart grids, but the company said it would like to provide an entire region with intelligent electricity by mid-2010.

Companies including Siemens, ABB and IBM are developing central system platforms that can collect all the data on decentralized energy production and consumption. The systems also calculate electricity prices based on fluctuations and pass this information back to consumers using broadband connections or by mobile radio. Together, these technologies will create an energy market place in which consumers themselves can buy and sell power.

A market in which energy is traded according to supply and demand will provide immense opportunities for service providers and startups. Some are developing systems to predict rate fluctuations based on weather forecasts and behavioral statistics. Start-ups can also come up with business innovations for a new version of the energy grid. The foundation of this new smart grid is cheap, ubiquitous microchips embedded in devices that use energy, store energy and devices that consume energy and a vast network of interconnected computers, otherwise known as the internet to manage them all.

Image by Schwarzerkater

GE Completes Purchase of Gearless Wind Turbine Manufacturer ScanWind

khalifa saber — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 14:20:13 +0000

With the acquisition of ScanWind, based in Trondheim, Norway, GE has secured a foothold in the growing offshore wind energy market. GE is gambling that ScanWinds early-stage turbine technology that could make offshore wind farms cheaper to maintain.

Instead of gearboxes, ScanWind uses a novel direct-drive generator technology in its 3.5-megawatt turbines. ScanWind’s turbine design gets rid of the gearbox completely. Instead, the rotor shaft is attached directly to the generator, which spins at the same speed as the blades. This makes the turbines more reliable, the company says, by cutting downtime and repair costs, an especially important consideration for turbines offshore, where it’s more expensive to send technicians for maintenance. ScanWind has been testing the turbines on the Norwegian coast since 2003.

The multiple wheels and bearings in a wind turbine gearbox suffer tremendous stress because of wind turbulence, and a small defect in any one component can bring the turbine to a halt. This makes the gearbox the most high-maintenance part of a turbine. Gearboxes in offshore turbines, which face higher wind speeds, are even more vulnerable than those in onshore turbines.

GE, based in Fairfield, CT, is the world’s second-largest maker of wind turbines, with more than 12,000 turbines installed globally. But GE’s offshore wind energy portfolio has been minimal so far, and the company wants to expand its offshore offerings. By acquiring ScanWind, transferring its expertise and understanding of onshore wind, and adding technologies such as remote monitoring and sensing, GE hopes it can make a solid, cost-effective offshore wind product.

In conventional wind turbines, the blades spin a shaft that is connected through a gearbox to the generator. The gearbox converts the turning speed of the blades (15 to 20 rpm for a large 1MW turbine) into the faster 1,800 rotations per minute that the generator needs to generate electricity. “Wind turbines are very different than any other gearbox application,” says Sandy Butterfield, chief engineer of the wind program at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO. “You’re going from a very low speed to a high speed.” Typically it’s the opposite.

In a turbine generator, magnets spin around a coil to produce current, the faster the magnets spin, the more current is induced in the coil. To make up for a direct drive generator’s slower spinning rate, the radius of rotation is increased, effectively increasing the speed with which the magnets move around the coil.

“Eliminating the gearbox from the wind turbine [removes] the technically most complicated part of the machine, inherently improving reliability,” says Henrik Stiesdal, chief technology officer of Siemens AG. Furthermore, if a permanent magnet is used in the generator, as is the case with newer turbines, the efficiency goes up even more. That’s because, unlike today’s electromagnetic generators, permanent magnets don’t need power.

Direct-drive generators currently cost more than geared systems and are 15 to 20 percent heavier. Still, GE’s decision to buy ScanWind is smart, says Butterfield. “Offshore machines are so expensive in terms of maintenance that some people are thinking the tradeoff tilts in favor of direct-drive generators,” he says. “I am optimistic that there is technology out there that’s going to help bring direct-drive generators down in parity with the weight and cost of geared systems.”

The leader in offshore wind energy, Siemens, has been testing two 3.6-megawatt proof-of-concept direct-drive turbines near Denmark for over a year now. Stiesdal says that the technology has proven to work just as well as gearboxes in terms of power, vibrations, temperature, noise, and reliability. Now it’s a matter of bringing down its cost.

GE expects to have a market-ready product by late 2012. It is targeting the European market initially because nearly all of the 1,473 megawatts of offshore wind power currently available come from installations along European coasts. According to industry analysts, this capacity must reach 30,000 megawatts by 2020 if the European Union is to meet its renewable-energy targets. One of the reasons for choosing ScanWind, says GE, is because of the company’s footprint in the Nordic countries, which, along with the U.K. and Germany, are the brightest spots for offshore wind energy.

image credit ScanWind / GE

Worlds Largest Electric Car Charging Network Begins

khalifa saber — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 21:48:39 +0000

This week saw the largest transportation electrification project in history begin. On 10/1/2009, eTec announced that they have officially signed the $99.8 million grant with DOE to start installing Electric Vehicle Infrastructure in 5 States, Arizona, California, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington. So I thought this might be a good time to examine the aims of the grant, the company involved and other companies involved in this space.

This is truly a milestone in the US’ and the Worlds in the adoption of Electric Vehicles. Due to the grant’s objectives, the transparency guidelines for taking the money, and observing consumer behaviors, this is seen more as a huge research project than a commercial enterprise. The potential lessons are hugely important in ensuring the smoothest, most cost effective transition to an electric vehicle fleet. Some of the questions this wide ranging, real world ’study’ can answer are:

Where are the best places to install charging stations…especially fast chargers?
How does having a charger near a retail location or restaurant affect consumer behavior?
How will range anxiety affect EV owners?
Monetizing electric vehicle charging - what works and what doesn’t?
How the ev’s charging network might work together with the smart grid concept?
What will be the actual dynamic between municipalities, utilities, business, and consumers on their adoption in the various cities?

ECOtality Inc.

signed a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy for a grant of $99.8 million to deploy what the company said is the largest charging infrastructure for electric vehicles in history.

The Electric Transportation Engineering Corp., or eTec is a subsidiary of Scottsdale-based ECOtality Inc. will deploy more than 11,000 chargers and 4,700 Nissan Leaf zero-emission electric vehicles.

The company has launched an official Web site for the project, www.theEVproject.com, to sign up to receive free charge infrastructure at a home or business. It also provides maps to show where charge stations are located.

“We can now work to make widespread electric vehicle use a reality by studying lessons learned from this project and providing a blueprint for other cities to adopt electric vehicles,” said ECOtality President Jonathan Read.

The project is in partnership with Nissan North America, which will deploy 4,700 of its all-electric Leaf vehicles which are scheduled for release in fall 2010.

As part of the project, Oregon expects to receive just under 1,000 of the Nissan vehicles and around 2,000 charging stations, centered around Portland, Eugene, Salem and Corvallis.

ETec won’t begin deploying the charging infrastructure until summer 2010.

Once deployed, the project will collect and analyze data to evaluate the effectiveness of electric vehicles in various topographic and climate conditions. The project also includes conducting trials on various means of collecting revenue for commercial and public charging infrastructure.

According to their website “eTec’s proprietary Minit-Charger technology can provide a safe and meaningful charge for an EV in approximately 15 minutes.”

ECOtality, whose subsidiary eTec snagged a nearly $100 million federal stimulus grant last month to support what the company describes as “the largest deployment of EV chargers and vehicles ever” (12,750 charging systems in five states for 5,000 Nissan LEAF electric vehicles), has formed two joint ventures with China’s Shenzhen Goch Investment, or SGI, in order to manufacture, assemble and sell EV charging equipment in China.

SGI will contribute $10 million for the manufacturing and assembly venture, which SGI founder Dongsheng Gong envisions will supply charging systems for “industrial, airport and on-road electric vehicle applications around the world,” and another $5 million for the sales effort.

The market for electric car charging systems in China is being driven by several forces. Chinese automakers, including BYD, Chery and Geely, have a strategic reason to go electric: Legacy car companies in North America, Europe and Japan haven’t yet mastered the technology, and so moving early and fast could allow China-based companies to grab a lead in the nascent market.

In addition, as China’s vice minister for industry and information technology, Miao Wei, a former Dongfeng Motor chairman, told the New York Times earlier this year, “the Chinese auto industry cannot grow sustainably” unless the “bottlenecks” of air pollution, rising consumption of imported oil and traffic congestion are addressed. Hoping to alleviate at least some of these problems, the Chinese government has thrown its weight behind electric vehicles, providing subsidies for research and electric vehicle purchases. All of that spells big opportunity for a company like ECOtality.

SolarCity and Tesla To Build 4 Charging Stations in California

A joint venture between Foster City-based SolarCity and San Carlos-based Tesla Motors, the solar charging stations will be placed at four specific Rabobank locations (Salinas, Atascadero, Santa Maria and Goleta) along the 101 route from San Francisco to Los Angeles, one of the most heavily traveled roadways in the world.

Rabobank, another participant in the revolutionary endeavor, is an international financial services provider located in 16 countries with headquarters in the Netherlands. Together, the three entities now offer solar charging venues to Tesla drivers.

Next year, according to SolarCity spokesman Jonathan Bass, the company will refit the charging stations to correspond to standards established by the Society of Automotive Engineers, making them available to drivers of other electric vehicles as well.

The solar charging stations are part of a marketing strategy, of course, but they also represent the companies’ focus on reducing the use of fossil fuels and the attendant emissions that contribute to global warming.

To Lyndon Rive, SolarCity’s CEO, they represent the “escape hatch” by which today’s consumers can escape the carbon economy. This is, in spite of its consumer-culture orientation, a worthy target. Rive is also adding some other incentives to the campaign, namely the purchase of a solar photovoltaic (PV) system with its own, free, EV (electronic vehicle) system.

SolarCity, founded in 2006, is one of the few solar installers to offer financing options to both commercial and residential solar energy customers. The Sept. 18 purchase of SolSource Energy (a solar installer offering electric car charging stations) allowed SolarCity to move confidently into this new venue.

Funding for the project came from the California Air Resources Board, which in 2007 provided a grant to Tesla of $641,000, according to Tesla spokeswoman Rachel Konrad. Part of that grant went into the cooperative development, with Auburn-based EV supplier Clipper Creek, of a fast-charging unit that Tesla has named the “High Power Connector”. This unit delivers up to 70 amps (240 volts) of electricity, which can charge the Tesla Roadster in as few as 3.5 hours.

The balance, about $80,000, went into establishing the charging spots and buying equipment for the installations. SolarCity also installed a 30-kilowatt solar energy array at the Rabobank’s bank’s Santa Maria branch, and a power purchase agreement will allow the bank to pay for the electricity generated while SolarCity maintains ownership of the array and the charging stations. Rabobank will cover the costs of recharging, which aren’t expected to be significant given the small number of Tesla electric vehicles currently on California roads, but that will likely change in the near future as auto makers ramp up EV production.

The High Power Connector comes with a price tag of $3,000, but can be installed in any garage or carport with a 15-amp circuit. Tesla cars can also be charged with any 110-volt outlet, but this process can take up to 1.5 days.

Panasonic to Sell Electric Car Chargers for Home and Business

Japan’s Panasonic Electric Works Co. said Thursday it will release a battery charger for all-electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids in June 2010. Elseev commercial charger will sell for equivalent of US$2,100.

The recharging device, dubbed Elseev, will sell for around 200,000 yen for use at public facilities and corporate parking lots.

In fiscal 2011 ending in March 2012, the company aims to sell 10,000 units of the device, which is 21 centimeters long, 28 centimeters wide and 160 centimeters high.

The company plans to release a home battery charger if electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids become more popular.

Electric Car Charger from ZAP Cuts Recharge Time from Hours to Minute

Electric car pioneer ZAP is saying about a new charging technology for their XEBRA electric car or truck.

ZAP says the charger on the XEBRA can be configured for charging with either a 110 or 220-volt outlet like the ones used with a household washer and dryer. The new charger is able to provide up to 100 amps or 10,000 watts of electricity into the vehicle and ZAP Chairman Gary Starr says it will significantly extend daily driving range.

“This new charger can reduce your charge time from hours to minutes,” said Starr. “Now you can drive your electric car all day with just a few short stops. In the time it takes to eat lunch you can hook your XEBRA up to the charger and have a full charge in less than an hour. Think of it as putting your XEBRA out to graze.”

Normally the XEBRA recharges in under six hours, but Starr says the new charger would be ideal for fleets, government agencies, corporations, universities and multi-car families looking to incorporate all-electric vehicles. It connects to a 240-volt, 60 amp circuit or 208-volt, 3-phase, 50 amp circuit. The fast charger is similar to ones used at Southwest Airlines, America West Airlines, the Toronto Pearson International Airport, and Arizona Public Service for recharging their fleets.

The new charger can be ordered through ZAP for about $9,000 and can even qualify for a Federal 30 percent tax credit. See IRS Tax Form 8911 for the Alternative Fuel Vehicle Property Credit. Starr added that people needing an even faster recharge could order a charger capable of putting out 15 kW or 50 percent more power.

ZAP calls the XEBRA design a ‘city-car,’ available as a 4-door sedan or 2-passenger truck, good for city-speed driving up to 40 MPH and priced about $10,000. ZAP recently introduced another way of improving range and battery life with an optional rooftop solar panel.

Smart USA Chooses Coulomb Technologies to Supply EV Chargers

The Smart fortwo ED is an upcoming pure electric car. It will be built by Daimler and use lithium-ion battery packs supplied by Tesla Motors. Testing of prototypes has been underway in Europe since 2007.

Earlier this year Daimler announced it would be bringing the vehicle into global production including the United States. Vehicle deliveries are intended to begin in 2010.

Coulomb Technology is the California-based start-up that has been deploying smart networked public electric car chargers. The company has been officially been selected by Daimler to exclusively supply the chargers for home use that will come with the electric smarts.

Coulomb offers unique wireless communication technology embedded in the chargers. This allows users to check charger availability and status via an online interface. The technology also allows for a subscription service so users can charge their EV at any Coulomb charger. These have already started being deployed in the public sphere across the nation.

The Smart program is Coulomb’s first step into the home charger market.

“Smart USA is demonstrating their commitment to reducing emissions and dependency on foreign oil with the introduction of their electric drive smart fortwo,” said Richard Lowenthal, CEO of Coulomb Technologies. “We are proud to say that our partnership with smart USA will provide their electric car buyers with home and public charging capabilities including energy cost optimization, web and smartphone-based charging management services, and high availability through remote monitoring.”

Britain’s Chief Energy Scientist “Greenhouse gas emissions created by Britons are probably twice as bad as figures suggest”

khalifa saber — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:09:15 +0000

The government’s new chief energy scientist Professor David MacKay told the BBC that reductions in carbon dioxide emissions since 1990 are “an illusion”. Greenhouse gas emissions created by Britons are probably twice as bad as figures suggest. “Our energy footprint has decreased over the last few decades and that’s largely because we’ve exported our industry,” he said. Developing countries now made the goods that Britain buys, he added.

He was speaking unofficially in a previously recorded interview, but his comments will increase pressure on the UK to improve its offer of emissions cuts at the upcoming climate change talks.
“Other countries make stuff for us so we have naughty, naughty China and India out of control with rising emissions but it’s because they are making our stuff for us now,” he said.

“It’s been estimated by Dieter Helm from the University of Oxford that roughly half of our energy footprint actually lives overseas so our true footprint is twice as big as it looks on paper.”
Prof Helm’s paper suggests if the UK counted “embedded” emissions, its total pollution would have gone up not down.

Mackay is the author of the highly influential book Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air, has won plaudits from both environmentalists and policymakers alike for his no-nonsense, science-based approach to dealing with renewable energy technologies.

Prof MacKay’s comments apply to all developed countries whose manufacturing industries have relocated to the developing world. He adds that we are right up there on the winners podium for carbon dioxide emissions per person over the last 125 years.

He also tackles sceptics of climate policy who argue the UK’s 2% share of current global emissions is trivial. If you take into account historic CO2, the UK is among the top three world polluters, he points out.
“The argument that we are only a small country could be used by pretty much every country on the planet and then we’d all do nothing,” he said.

“Back in 1910 we were burning per capita the same amount as Americans do today so that’s an argument for saying we really have an ethical duty to take a lead and show the way and show that it is possible for a developed country to seriously decarbonise its economy.

“By historical emissions per capita the top three are America, Germany and Britain so we are right up there on the winners podium for carbon dioxide emissions per person over the last 125 years.

Prof MacKay started his new job on Thursday, and his new employers at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) do not challenge his figures.

A spokesman said: “While some emission reductions have resulted from the trend for manufacturing to move overseas, it’s internationally accepted that emissions from manufacturing are counted by the country of production.”

If global warming is to be limited, the US and Europe will have to take much more drastic action to reduce those emissions embedded in their own consumption.

Prof Dieter Helm

Setting a baseline of 1990 for emissions cuts allowed the UK to cut emissions without trying because 1990 was a peak of coal burning in Britain.

A study from the Stockholm Environment Institute estimated when embedded emissions are taken into account, the average UK resident pollutes 15 tonnes a year - almost five times more than the average Chinese person at 3.1 tonnes a year.

The failure to calculate embedded emissions has damaged the reputation of countries such as China which are making goods for export to the West but are then blamed for the pollution that results.

Prof Helm’s paper says: “If carbon outsourcing is factored back in, the UK’s impressive emissions cuts over the past two decades don’t look so impressive anymore. “Rather than falling by over 15% since 1990, they actually rose by around 19%. And even this is flattering, since the UK closed most of its coal industry in the 1990s for reasons unrelated to climate change.

“No doubt, recalculating the figures for other European countries and the US would reveal a similar pattern.”
It is consumption and not production that matters, according to Prof Helm. “This means that if global warming is to be limited, the US and Europe will have to take much more drastic action to reduce those emissions embedded in their own consumption,” he said.

“Their appropriate emissions reduction targets will have to be based on the consumption of goods that cause those emissions in the first place. This not only means that the true scale of required emissions reductions in the Western world will be much higher but that the impact on economic growth and living standards there will also be more severe than so far believed.”

Image is of Drax, the coal-fired power station located near Selby in North Yorkshire, England. It provides 7% of the electrical power required by Britain. Although it generates around 1.5 million tonnes of ash and 22.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, Drax is the most carbon efficient coal-fired powerplant in the UK. In 2005 Drax produced 20.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. The Times newspaper reported that this is more than the total amount produced by 103 of the world’s small unindustrialized nations. By comparison, vehicles in the UK emitted 91 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. Drax is the biggest single source of carbon dioxide in the UK. Photo by Jason Hawkes

Solar Rooftops in Spain Make Good Investment Sense

khalifa saber — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:25:42 +0000

Spain is a powerhouse for solar energy production in Europe because it has excellent sun resources and because it has a feed-in tariff for renewable energy production, as does Germany. With a feed-in tariff, project developers are ensured that electricity will be purchased at a certain rate over a fixed term (currently €0.34 per kWh), usually for 20 or 25 years, this creates an excellent annual financial return of up to 12%. Try getting that kind of return from your bank.

One such deal has just been announced by Recurrent Energy. They plan to install 4.8 megawatts worth of solar panels on several rooftops leased from distribution company ProLogis. In this model, Recurrent owns and operates the panels and sells the electricity the panels generate. ProLogis gets a one-time construction management fee and an annual rental payment.

ProLogis will also provide construction management services and is expected to begin development in October 2009. The execution of the projects will use local services within Barcelona and Madrid, including local contractors, engineering firms, and consultants. The completion of all projects is estimated for mid-2010.

I am very interested in this kind of distributed energy network in Spain as one of the companies following this model is my own company, Pretasol Energia. This model, where an outside company rents rooftop space and sells the panels’ electricity, is also being pursued in the U.S. by a small number of utilities. Southern California Edison, is planning to install as much as 250 megawatts worth of solar energy capacity on hundreds of commercial rooftops.

Over the past few years the focus has been on large, autonomous solar photovoltaic power plants. But financing those large plants and finding sites for them, often in environmentally sensitive protected land in the southwest U.S., has slowed deployment of those large-scale systems.

The combined output of Recurrent’s installations in Spain, which are set to go online in 2010, is enough to power well over 1,000 homes. By contrast, a centralized solar plant would be built with enough capacity to power hundreds of thousands of homes. However, the benefits are that the land is already developed (the rooftop is already there) and power lines are in place reducing infrastructure costs and environmental impact.

“Working with Recurrent Energy brings us their expertise of developing distributed-scale projects which are faster to interconnect and permit, delivering the benefits of solar energy sooner, “ said Drew Torbin, director of global renewable energy for ProLogis. “We are a solid match, with more than 450 million square feet of large, flat, unobstructed, permit-ready roof space worldwide, ProLogis is able to solve one of the most basic issues involved in developing large-scale solar projects –the availability of appropriate host sites.”

Recurrent Energy CEO Arno Harris said in a statement.
“We have over 500 MW of distributed-scale projects in development across North America and Europe, and what this project successfully demonstrates is the sizable role commercial and industrial rooftops can play in large-scale solar deployment,”.

Photo is an illustration of a solar installation planned in Spain (Credit: ProLogis)

Electric Cars go Mainstream at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show

khalifa saber — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 15:05:11 +0000

The theme of the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show which ran for most of last week can best be summed up in one word: “electric.” Nearly every manufacturer has unveiled a vehicle using the latest battery technology, whether hybrids or plug-ins, extended-range electric vehicles or pure battery cars.

Auto industry officials may be quick to talk up the newest in electric transportation, they’ll also admit it’s not going to be easy abandoning the time-tested internal combustion engine. And the cost is likely to be substantial to governments, the industry and consumers.

Audi has been one of Europe’s most strident champions of diesel technology and has repeatedly voiced its doubts on battery electric power and hydrogen fuel cell technology. But at the Frankfurt Motor Show on Tuesday, it unveiled the e-tron, an electric-car concept.

The e-tron is among the sexiest cars taking a bow at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show. With its aggressive, low-slung design, the 2-seater is a close cousin to the German maker’s R8 supercar, but uses a Lithium-Ion battery pack to power four individual motors, one for each wheel. Audi intends to put the e-tron — which can launch to 60 in just 4.8 seconds — into production in 2012.

At the other end of the vast Halle 5, Audi’s sibling division, Volkswagen, is targeting the other end of the automotive market. Its e-Up, which reaches showrooms in 2013, is based on VW’s new Up minicar, and is conceived as an urban commuter vehicle. It will be relatively low cost by battery car standards, but while VW isn’t giving out any hard numbers, industry observers expect it could cost twice as much as the gas or diesel-powered minicar.

The price of battery technology will come down with volume production, predicts Elon Musk, founder of California’s Tesla Motors, which is selling the $100,000 battery Roadster. The maker’s Model S will be a $57,000 family sedan with more room and more range.

But that’s still not cheap, and raises a basic question about which end of the market might be more open to battery technology. Audi CEO Rupert Stadler says his company is starting out with e-tron, because, “This is where the customer is most willing to pay a premium for this type of technology.”

Though initially slow to the segment, Mercedes-Benz is taking the same approach, in part because that may be the only way to keep its traditional product range alive. In major markets, such as the U.S. and Europe, they’re facing tough new restrictions on fuel consumption and the emissions of CO2, a gas strongly linked to global warming.

“Does sustainability mean we have to build small cars? Not necessarily,” insists Dr. Thomas Weber, the Daimler AG board member in charge of technology, pointing to the S500, a battery-based version of Mercedes’ big S-Class, which could get up to 70 mpg.

Renault has become one of the first global players to launch a range of purely electric cars at the Frankfurt Motor Show. Designed to cater for everyone from a single traveller to local commercial transport, via 2.5 kids family cars, it’s significant in three ways:

the range is designed from scratch as a complete set of electric cars — not gas-fueled cars with an electric motor retro-fitted to give the manufacturer green kudos;
the cars will be priced without an “electric premium,” allowing them to compete alongside gas-based engines on a like-for-like basis for the first time ever;
most importantly, they’re real. Presented as concept cars, the Kangoo ZE is already in an advanced prototype stage.

But even if luxury customers accept the higher cost of battery technology, they face problems similar to those who’d buy the tiny e-Up. Range, for one thing. Even the latest LIon technology has trouble delivering much more than 150 miles per charge.

One possible way to get around this is with an Extended-Range Electric Vehicle, like the Opel Ampera, which borrows its E-REV technology from the Chevrolet Volt. When the battery runs down, after about 40 miles, the car switches on its gasoline engine and keeps going.

Even then, Ampera needs to be plugged in overnight, just like e-Up and e-Tron. That might be easy for suburban commuters with a garage, but many potential customers live in urban centers, where gaining access for their car to a basic electric socket or a high-power, high-speed charger could prove difficult.

Working with the German government and an alliance of energy providers, a consortium of German automakers, including Mercedes and BMW, plan to invest at least $1.5 billion over the coming decade, eventually creating about 1,000 alternative power service stations across the country. Each will provide both chargers and access to hydrogen, the clean, lightweight fuel used by the BMW Hydrogen7 and Mercedes’ new F-Cell, the latter also debuting in Frankfurt.

“But where will that energy come from?” asked Johan de Nysschen, CEO of Audi of America. Like many battery skeptics, he warns that there could be a need for a lot more electric power plants, if EVs catch on, “but if we use dirty power, like coal, we’re just swapping emissions from the tailpipe for emissions from the smokestack.”

There may be a solution to that question in the theory put forward by Willett Kempton.

Kempton, 61, directs the Center for Carbon-free Power Integration at the University of Delaware. He is the originator of a concept that would make electric vehicles a boon to today’s electricity grid, and a potential solution for one of the biggest climate-related question marks hovering over the grid’s future: how to store renewable energy.

The idea is to allow electric vehicles not only to draw power from the grid, but to send electricity back into it, as well. It effectively would use the cars’ batteries as a big storage system to help buffer the constantly fluctuating balance of electricity in the system. These ups and downs that are expected to become steeper and more unpredictable as the share of renewable energy rises.

Even the biggest proponents of electrification, speaking in Frankfurt, acknowledged there are numerous challenges to the widespread adoption of the technology. Some manufacturers are looking at alternative business models, for example. Nissan may sell motorists the company’s new Leaf battery-electric vehicle, but lease the LIon battery pack at a rate close to what a typical driver would spend on fuel each month.

The wild card is consumer acceptance, of course, and no one is certain how widespread that will be. “The common thinking,” said Audi’s Schwarzenbauer, is that “It will take until 2030 to have half of the market go electric.”

One of the cars that might make that a reality is the electric Trabant. The 2007 Frankfurt Motor Show saw the launch of a concept and this year see’s a working prototype on display. And it should be on sale by 2012.

It’s being developed by an unlikely combination of specialist car manufacturer IndiKar, the former Volkswagen designer Nils Poschwatta and the leading miniatures manufacturer, Herpa.

The Trabant shares an innovative solar roof with the new Toyota Prius. Many electric cars carry an additional 12V battery in order to power SatNav, heating and other low-voltage “necessities.” These will all be powered by its solar roof and if there isn’t enough sun then your air-con won’t work. But seems like a practical solution to a problem that will mainly occur when it is sunny.
The most important thing to ensuring widespread acceptance from the mainstream market is that all this is delivered on the cheap. The new Trabant nT is not a rival to Mercedes or Rolls Royce. It doesn’t even try to compete with Ford.

It’s a simple, no-nonsense electric car which will go both forwards and backwards, and may power other electric appliances if the solar panel is getting enough sun. For an estimated $1.5/night to charge, you get a top speed of 80mph and a maximum range 100 miles. Pretty you can get an average-performing car on the cheap, then why bother with a more expensive car with similar performance?

As the recession bites and rising oil prices squeeze financial belts tighter, this bottom of the range get-up-and-go vehicle may well be an instant hit. A true “car of the people,” keeping the population mobile for as little cost as possible.

Even that take is a matter of debate. But considering the pressure to find a clean alternative to the internal combustion engine, no one is willing to risk sitting on the sidelines, which is why some form of electric propulsion was such a key part of every major manufacturers offering at the 2009 Frankfurt Motor Show.

California to Spend $3.1 Billion to Save Energy but who Guards the Guardians?

khalifa saber — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 11:06:15 +0000

California energy regulators approved spending $3.1 billion over the next three years to cut the amount of electricity used in the state. This is one of the most aggressive energy efficiency plan among U.S. states, with the money being used to retrofit homes and other programs that will cut power needs equivalent to three medium-sized power plants.

The California Public Utilities Commission on Thursday unanimously approved plans by Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric, and Southern California Gas to provide $3.1 billion in consumer rebates and other efficiency programs over the next three years.

The budget is 42 percent higher than the previous three-year plan. California pioneered the concept of letting utilities raise rates as they spurred conservation, which still is not the case in many U.S. states.

The energy saved through the programs would be the same amount of power produced by three 500 megawatt power plants, according to the CPUC.

The program will also avoid 3 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions and create between 15,000 and 18,000 jobs.

The move by regulators follows Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s order earlier this month that the state get a third of its electricity from renewable resources by 2020.

The most populous state is also the biggest U.S. alternative energy market, and its environmental standards, including car pollution rules and green building regulations, are models for national and international policies.

To reach California’s goals, however, broader programs that have “holistic approaches” to energy efficiency are key, said Michael Peevey, the commission’s president, in a statement.

“Capturing the full energy efficiency potential in the state requires more than simply providing rebates to support the installation of the latest and greatest widget,” Peevey said.

The funds will kick off the largest residential retrofit effort in the United States. Called CalSPREE, the program aims to cut energy use by 20 percent for up to 130,000 homes in the state by 2012.

The budget also includes $175 million for innovative programs to make zero net energy homes and commercial buildings; $260 million for local efforts to retrofit public sector buildings and save energy; and more than $100 million for education and training programs.

It also phases down subsidies for basic compact fluorescent lamps, shifting to solid state lighting and other efficient light technologies.

“This investment in California’s clean energy economy is just what we need to create new jobs for our communities and fight global warming pollution,” said Lara Ettenson, director of California Energy Efficiency Policy at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a prominent environmental organization.

Not everyone shares NRDC’s optimism, however.

The Division of Ratepayer Advocates (DRA), an independent consumer advocacy division of the CPUC, warned that the powerful utility companies should be closely monitored to see how they make use of such a tremendous sum.

In a statement released this morning, the DRA highlighted “a continuing need for stronger mechanisms to ensure transparency and accountability in the utilities’ use of the billions of dollars of ratepayer money.” Utility giant PG&E has been criticized in the past for misuse of energy-efficiency funds.
Grassroots organizations advocating for publicly owned electricity systems charge that PG&E has funneled energy efficiency money into campaigns that directly attack public power programs, or to sway public opinion against these alternatives, for its own economic advantage.

DRA has also pointed out that the utility has failed to meet its energy-efficiency targets in the past. At the end of the last energy efficiency program cycle, the company was granted about $41 million in incentive money for successful program implementation, even though an independent analysis revealed that it fell short of its energy-reduction goals.

Despite a 70 percent budget increase relative to the last energy-efficiency program cycle, DRA points out that the utilities have projected comparatively lower energy savings from now until 2012. The division also notes that hard evidence is lacking that the utilities’ energy-efficiency programs are viable and cost-effective. As a result, “ratepayers are investing billions of dollars on faith alone that actual energy savings will result from the programs,” DRA warned in a press statement.

It should also be noted that NRDC is a corporate influenced group, that should not be rightly called an environmental group. It was started by Wall Street attorneys to create a faux buffer between real environmental organizers and corporations in order to dumb down the efforts of good groups working to truly hold corporations accountable to environmental and consumer protections.

Here is a paragraph from PR Watch about NRDC which is part of a longer story on the group at http://www.prwatch.org/prwissues/2003Q3/enviros.html:

“NRDC had been founded in 1970 by two Wall Street lawyers to fight legal cases to protect the environment. It was funded by the Ford Foundation on the condition that it accepted a conservative board of trustees that included Laurence Rockefeller and other wealthy conservatives. Additionally, Ford stipulated that its legal activities had to be cleared by a group of past presidents of the American Bar Association. One of the two founding lawyers, Stephen Duggan, was a partner in the New York law firm, Simpson, Thatcher & Bartlett, which included utilities as a major part of its clientele. At the behest of the Ford Foundation, the NRDC also incorporated a similar public interest law group made up of Yale Law School graduates, which included John Bryson, who later became head of the Californian Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and then chief executive of Southern California Edison Company (SoCalEd). Cavanagh was reportedly a “disciple of Bryson.” “

The only way to make effective inroads on climate change and to insure continued energy supply is to dramatically reduce energy consumption and transition to power-generating sources that do not burn fossil fuels. The problem is that ss it stands, the ones in charge of the state’s new $3 billion energy-saving measures are the same corporate entities that sell electricity and operate fossil fuel powered facilities. The obvious phrase that comes to mind in all this is “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” a Latin phrase from the Roman poet Juvenal, which literally translates to “Who will guard the guards themselves?”.

Image of AES Huntington Beach Generating Station by r_neches on flickr licensed under Creative Commons

Battery Energy Storage Explained

khalifa saber — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 06:50:36 +0000

Batteries, single purpose devices that most of us take for granted unless they need to be recharged or replaced, are an essential enabling technology for renewable energy and the sixth industrial revolution. With this week’s impressive launch of A123 Systems, it appears as if investor interest is picking up.

Energy storage is a varied industrial sector that encompasses a variety of mechanical, electrochemical and electrostatic devices and eighteen pure play public companies that range from well known to unknown. This article takes a look at the current state of the technology and the major players involved.

Batteries rely on chemistry, rather than physics, so the rapid rates of change we’ve come to expect from information technology and electronics will be rare in the battery industry. Moore’s Law simply does not apply. It’s perfectly reasonable to assume that battery technologies will continue to improve at single digit annual rates, but expecting disruptive changes that result in huge cost reductions or performance gains is unreasonable. Which is why when EEStor says that they are working on an “electrical energy storage unit” that would hold ten times the amount of power as todays most advanced batteries at the same weight. Their claims have to be meet with a fair degree of let’s wait and see.

The battery business is hard-core manufacturing and revenue growth will be tied to the construction of new factories, a process that requires substantial amounts of time and money. Accordingly, the time lag between a new product announcement and the receipt of substantial revenue from product sales will typically be measured in months or years, rather than weeks.

Battery manufacturing requires huge amounts of raw materials that typically account for 70% to 80% of total production costs. So while material constraints have not been major issues in many new industries, they can be important issues for batteries that are based on scarce or expensive raw materials.

The History of Battery Technology

The earliest known methods of generating electricity were by creating a static charge. Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) invented the so-called “electric pistol” by which an electrical wire was placed in a jar filled with methane gas. By sending an electrical spark through the wire, the jar would explode.

The next stage of generating electricity was through electrolysis. Volta discovered in 1800 that a continuous flow of electrical force was possible when using certain fluids as conductors to promote a chemical reaction between metals. Volta discovered further that the voltage would increase when voltaic cells were stacked. This led to the invention of the battery.

From the availability of a battery, experiments were no longer limited to a brief display of sparks that lasted a fraction of a second. A seemingly endless stream of electric current was now available.

During the 1800s, people began to find ways to make batteries do useful work beyond electro-plating and parlor tricks. From there technology progressed rapidly to a point where batteries are now a ubiquitous but largely invisible part of our daily lives. We don’t usually think about batteries until they need to be recharged or replaced, but life would be very different without them.

Until the 1960s, there were two primary classes of batteries: rechargeable lead-acid batteries and disposable dry cells. Lead-acid batteries handled the heavy work like starting cars and providing emergency lighting while dry cells were used for flashlights, toys and consumer goods, including the first wave of cheap transistor radios.

In the mid-70s, maintenance free valve regulated lead-acid (VRLA) batteries were introduced and rapidly became the dominant technology. They worked so well in fact that the level of R&D spending on lead-acid technology plummeted. Shortly thereafter, new rechargeable battery chemistries including nickel cadmium (NiCd), nickel metal hydride (NiMH) and lithium ion (Li-ion) emerged on the scene. Since the new chemistries had tremendous potential utility in portable electronics, R&D spending on those chemistries soared in response to intense consumer demand. That trend continued through the early years of the current decade because lead-acid batteries were generally adequate for the work they needed to do while batteries for portable electronics were still frequently inadequate.

Over the last few years, an entirely new market dynamic has emerged as people have been forced to come to grips with the amount of energy they waste. Today we are witnessing a seismic shift in the storage sector because none of the technologies we relied on in the past is durable enough or robust enough to meet the demands of an energy efficient future. In response companies throughout the energy storage sector have taken the following steps:

Instituted new research programs to improve the performance and durability of lead-acid batteries;
Refocused existing research to concentrate on making larger NiCd, NiMH and Li-ion batteries;
Increased research on new and improved flow battery chemistries;
Devoted new resources to physical storage systems like pumped hydro, compressed air and flywheels.

The winners reward will be massive new markets that represent an estimated incremental value of up to $70 billion per year – a whopping 233% increase over current global revenues of $30 billion across the industry.

Key Concepts

Understanding performance claims in the energy storage sector can be difficult because there are several critical performance metrics including “energy,” or the capacity to do work, which is usually measured in watt-hours (Wh); “power,” or the rate at which work can be performed, which is usually measured in watts (W); and “cycle-life,” or the number of times a device can be discharged and recharged before it needs to be replaced. Another key concept is “energy density,” which quantifies the amount of energy a battery pack can deliver per unit of weight measured in kilograms (kg) or volume measured in liters (l).

If you think in terms of the humble electric golf cart, energy limits the distance you can travel on a single charge, power limits your speed of travel, cycle-life limits the number of rounds of golf you can play before replacing the battery and energy density dictates the size of your battery pack. So performance metrics are easy to understand when they are tied to the requirements of a particular application. But if you try to discuss performance metrics in a vacuum without considering how they relate to a particular application, all you get are confusing gee whiz numbers.

It would be much less confusing if every company presented summary production, revenue and cost data using a uniform watt-hour metric. The disclosures in the prospectus for the proposed A123 Systems IPO come close, but are still not quite there. This simple change would make it far easier to make apples to apples comparisons and truly understand the competitive strengths and weaknesses of widely varied storage technologies. But since fair comparability might spoil the story that some companies want to spin we might have to wait awhile longer for a standard to emerge.

Application Requirements

There is an incredible diversity of needs that the energy storage industry must satisfy, so much so that the best way to describe the challenges is to give some real world examples.

In a light HEV where the principal goal is to use energy from recuperative braking to provide extra boost during acceleration, power and cycle-life are the critical metrics. You need a storage solution that can accept a huge charge over a 10 to 15 second braking interval, deliver that charge over a 10 to 15 second acceleration interval and repeat the process many thousands of times over the life of the vehicle. In a PHEV where the principal goal is to run in electric only mode for 40 or 50 miles and then switch over to an internal combustion engine, energy and power are the critical metrics and cycle-life is fairly unimportant because the average user will not recharge his batteries more than 300 to 500 times in any given year.

Similar disparities are common in the utility industry where power and cycle-life are critical metrics for frequency regulation and short-term grid stabilization, but energy and power are the critical metrics for long discharge periods involving rate arbitrage, renewables leveling and diurnal storage.

In the extreme case of an emergency backup or upgrade deferral system that only kicks in if there is a severe grid disruption, energy and power are the only metrics that matter and cycle-life is almost irrelevant.

Size and weight are mission critical constraints in portable electronic device. They are far less important in motive applications and almost irrelevant in stationary applications. Likewise, high cycle-life and power are critical for light HEVs but expensive overkill for an electric runabout that will only be charged a couple thousand times during its useful life. In the final analysis, the fundamental laws of economics will require that every user pick the storage solution that is best suited to his particular needs and budget.

Lithium-ion Technology

The first commercial Li-ion batteries were introduced by Sony in 1991 and there have been huge improvements in safety, power and cycle-life over the last two decades. But each major safety improvement has reduced energy density and increased manufacturing costs.

Sony’s original Li-ion batteries had energy densities approaching 200 Wh/kg, were able to deliver their stored energy in an hour and offered between 500 and 1,000 cycles. In comparison, today’s high-end Li-phosphate and Li-titanate batteries offer energy densities of less than 100 Wh/kg; can deliver their stored energy in three to five minutes and offer useful lives of 5,000 to 20,000 cycles. Between these extremes, the variables are almost endless.

While precise cost comparisons are difficult because nobody uses standardized reporting metrics, the bulk of available data indicates that lithium-cobalt batteries based on Sony’s original chemistry cost $0.45 to $0.55 per Wh and high-end Li-phosphate and Li-titanate batteries can cost upwards of $1.50 per Wh. About the only good price news in the group is Li-polymer batteries that cost about $0.35 per Wh to manufacture.

Battery cost per Wh is not a critical issue when a consumer is shopping for a 50 Wh laptop battery. But it will be the primary market driver when that same consumer is shopping for a 2,000 Wh battery for a Toyota Prius, a 16,000 Wh battery for a Chevy Volt or a 26,000 Wh battery for a Th!nk City runabout.

There is no question that today’s Li-ion batteries offer far better power and cycle-life than Sony’s originals. But gains in one performance metric have always reduced energy while increasing manufacturing costs. Over the last two decades, Li-ion technology has seen incremental improvements of 8% to 10% per year, but it’s never seen anything even close to the “Moore’s Law” type performance gains so many investors have come to rely on.

Since we have not seen disruptive performance improvements over the last two decades when Li-ion technology was rapidly evolving and research chemists had all the R&D funding they could possibly use, I think it is unreasonable to assume that disruptive performance improvements will arise in the future as a mature technology is scaled up to larger sizes. There is also the problem of raw materials that are not abundant in nature, unless we believe the reports of mining companies, all of which should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Li-ion is a wonderful technology that has a wealth of potential uses, but is unlikely to be a cheap general-purpose solution for all energy storage needs. Many of the currently proposed uses for the technology will probably be better left to other energy storage technologies.

Lead-Acid Technology

After the invention of VRLA batteries in the mid-70s, research on lead-acid technology plummeted and there were no substantive new research and development projects for almost 30 years. VRLA batteries were adequate for the work they needed to do and without the pain of necessity there was no compelling incentive for new invention.

That dynamic began to change a few years ago when it became obvious that new energy storage solutions would be essential to minimize waste. At that point, researchers once again began to look at new ways to improve lead acid battery performance by integrating new materials and technologies that were developed for use in other sectors during the 30-year period when lead-acid research stagnated. Established lead-acid battery producers funded some of the research work, but Firefly Energy, Axion Power International (AXPW.OB) and Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) initiated the more ambitious projects.

The Firefly project was spun out of Caterpillar (CAT) in 2003 and its goal was to use a carbon foam composite to replace lead current collector grids. Firefly’s hope was that its carbon foam technology would reduce the amount of lead used in a battery, minimize lead that was not chemically active and improve energy density. Over the last five years, the Firefly project has grown from a pure R&D initiative to a manufacturing and commercialization partnership between Firefly and C&D Technologies (CHP) that was announced at the end of October. While pricing information hasn’t been released yet, the available performance data indicates that the new Oasis battery will offer a 40% to 50% increase in energy density, higher power and up to 800 cycles at an 80% depth of discharge. The Oasis battery will probably cost $0.20 to $0.30 per Wh, or twice as much as a normal lead-acid battery, but offer four times the performance in suitable applications.

The Axion project was also initiated in 2003 and its goal was to create a true hybrid between a lead-acid battery and a supercapacitor by replacing the lead-based negative electrodes with carbon electrode assemblies. Axion’s hope was that its PbC devices would reduce the amount of lead used in a battery, eliminate sulfation, which is the primary cause of lead-acid battery failure, and bring supercapacitor-like power to the lead-acid world.

Over the last five years, the Axion project has progressed from a pure R&D initiative to a planned commercial rollout that’s expected by mid-2009. While detailed performance and price specifications haven’t been released yet, the available information indicates that Axion’s PbC battery will offer a 400% increase in power and well over 1,200 cycles at a 90% depth of discharge. Axion’s PbC batteries will probably cost $0.20 to $0.30 per Wh, or twice as much as a normal lead-acid battery, but offer six to eight times the performance in suitable applications.

The historical details on the CSIRO project are a bit sketchy but the CSIRO ultrabattery appears to have a lot in common with Axion’s PbC battery since both products are a battery-supercapacitor hybrid. While we don’t know much about the design, construction and electrochemistry of the CSIRO ultrabattery, there are some impressive results from a recent 100,000-mile road test in a modified Honda Insight. The bottom line was that the CSIRO device performed flawlessly; got 2.8% less gas mileage because of the added battery weight; but offered a $2,000 cost savings over the factory original NiMH battery.

These advances clearly demonstrate that disruptive improvements in lead-acid chemistry are still possible when advanced materials and technologies that were developed in recent years are combined into new products based on inherently cheap lead-acid chemistry. When it comes to cost-effective energy storage, Firefly, Axion and CSIRO have made more progress in five years than the entire Li-ion group has made in two decades. This is a space that is set to heat up tremendously over the next few decades and will be crucial in deciding how the renewable energy century plays out.

Image is of a 20Ah Automotive Class Lithium Ion Cell

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